Cormac McCarthy, 89, has a new novel — two, actually. And they’re almost perfect. The first, called The Crossing, is an epic piece of Irish crime fiction set in the Irish countryside, but in our modern era it’s been released in hardcover and on Kindle, for anyone who can read it on a screen. It’s an astonishing feat in the history of books, which often have to adapt to the times they’re written in. McCarthy’s style isn’t new — in fact, he did it all with style in his early novels, and it’s the style that helps make The Crossing a classic.
But he was also a professional writer who went on to do some other books, like “The Road” and “The Orator,” and had been published in The New Yorker. In an interview on his website, McCarthy said the novel is essentially the same in each of its two parts, and when he sat down to write it he knew exactly which way he wanted to go.
“I was very conscious,” he said of how he planned the story, “of trying to get away from the sort of American character, who just feels like they’re in control and they’ve got that power to do something about the world, and really, in their own time, to move on and to change the way the world works. I try now not to have to do that, and to get involved in the world and to be a part of the way the world works, and not get out of it. And for me that’s the most important thing.”
So why does it work so well, especially as a book that’s being released on Kindle? It has many reasons.
First of all, it’s the best kind of book, one in which every word is perfect. McCarthy has always written to a point where everything is perfect. A critic or somebody who’s very familiar with the works of Robert Walser said it was one of Walser’s greatest strengths as a writer was the consistency. He could be in Germany